Striving For Perfection

It’s January and the brand new year beckons. Already my mailbox is filled each day with gardening catalogs, and I willingly fall into the trance of dreaming about creating the perfect garden. You know the one I mean – the one depicted in all the catalogs: lush growth, perfectly shaped fruit, no sign of insect damage, no drought or overwatering woes evident in these Edens of horticultural bliss.

No matter how frustrating the previous growing season was, by January I am once again overcome with hope, and lured by the possibilities of growing prize-winning vegetables and flowers. Soon we will map out the 2012 garden plot, choosing the varieties of carrots, lettuce, Swiss chard, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, tomatillos, peas, and beans that we want to try this year. Each year we try to grow something we have never grown before. It’s amazing how much food you can get out of a small garden plot.

I have almost no skill when it comes to gardening. I think it is sheer enthusiasm that drives me toward imagined success. That and a partner who is a reliable, experienced, patient and hard-working gardener. All the things I am not. 

When I was in fourth grade, I joined a summer program sponsored by the school system in my city. They supplied the seeds, and we were supposed to establish a backyard garden plot and responsibly tend it throughout the summer vacation months. Every two weeks, someone from the school department came around to check on the progress of these gardens, and they would leave encouraging notes, comments and suggestions. On her first visit to my house, my gardening coach left a message taped to the side door of our house saying that she had searched our yard and could find no evidence of a garden. I was a little fuzzy on the concept of soil preparation and practiced a laissez faire, Darwinian approach to seed scattering. You couldn’t really call it planting. I broadcast the seeds, more or less.  From that point on, it was sheer survival of the fittest – with pigweeds and chickory being the fittest.

So traumatic was this initial effort at gardening that for many years I was not interested in learning how to do it properly. Gardening is work! In fact, it’s more than work, it is a philosophy of life; it’s a metaphor for life. It is an opportunity to achieve perfection.

Long ago, I lived for a while in California in the top floor of a large pink house. The small front and backyard landscaping was cared for by a dedicated, talented Japanese-American gardener who came each week to patiently coax all the vegetation towards excellence. No screaming leaf blowers, no ride-on mowers, just one little man armed with pruning sheers, and an old push-lawnmower, who quietly dispatched faded blossoms, withering leaves, and any plant threatening to overrun its appointed area. I envied his ability to control the garden.

So, now on these January evenings, we sit by the woodstove and page through seed catalogs, deciding what to add to the order form, dreaming of tasty salads, homemade strawberry jam, pickles, etc. to come, and ignoring all thoughts of the Japanese beetles, slugs, cut-worms, cucumber beetles, aphids, and other evils sure to make an appearance at some point next summer. 

Instead, we concentrate on the quiet beauty of the garden, the butterflies, birds, frogs and toads, and other little critters with which we share our land.

Ah, but then there are the deer.